Bloomsday is tomorrow

AP Photo/John CogillFive unidentifed women, one of whom reads from "Ulysses," walk along Sandycove in period dress in Dublin, Ireland, in 2004, during "Bloomsday."

Members of the Syracuse James Joyce Club will be back at Johnston's Ballybay Pub (550 Richmond St., Syracuse) all day Saturday, to celebrate Bloomsday.

The festivities, which include readings from the Irish writer's masterpiece novel, Ulysses, kick off at noon and will last until 10 p.m.

For the uninitiated, here's a story I wrote for The Post-Standard back in 2002. It explains Bloomsday and Joyceans' continuing fascinating with his challenging 1922 novel, set in Dublin on June 16, 1904.

LITERARY ODYSSEY
IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO READ "ULYSSES'

The Post-Standard
Sunday, June 9, 2002

By Laura T. Ryan Staff writer

Begin with a book so dense with detail, so leaden with pulp and ink, that its consumption demands both brains and brawn.

Now toss in long passages without punctuation, phrases in several languages and an unrelenting barrage of cultural, literary and historical references.

The resulting stew constitutes a literary sea change, "Ulysses" by James Joyce - a novel that not only influenced all others to come after it, but also requires a support group to read.

The Irish-born writer's epic 1922 novel describes a day (June 16, 1904) in the lives of three characters in Dublin, Ireland: Jewish advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, wife Molly and young writer Stephen Dedalus. It loosely parallels "The Odyssey" of Homer.

But that deceptively simple summary does little to explain why readers around the world gather every year to read the 700-plus-page book out loud on June 16, also known as Bloomsday. Or why some pilgrims travel to Dublin and spend the day in the pubs and other places featured in the novel.

Why, indeed.

Intent on an answer, we sought the counsel of a Joyce scholar, as well as members of the Syracuse James Joyce Club, which for nine years has mounted a marathon, daylong public reading of "Ulysses." (Bloomsday comes a day early in Syracuse this year, to avoid conflicts with Father's Day on June 16.)

"Why do we care about one day, June 16, 1904, in the life of a 38-year-old advertising salesman who is barely a Jew, his lusty and frustrated wife, and a 22-year-old depressive recovering Catholic who would like to be recognized as a major writer although he hasn't written more than a "capful of odes'?" asked Dan Schwarz, professor of English at Cornell University and author of "Reading Joyce's "Ulysses"' (1987).

Why? Because we empathize with Dedalus as frustrated artist and Bloom as dawdling ad man; we're intrigued by the dysfunctional Bloom marriage; and we see our own obsessions, frustrations, fixations and ambitions mirrored in those of the characters, Schwarz said.

"We also read "Ulysses' because the novel can be hilarious, high-spirited and playful in its language and situations," Schwarz said. "Because of the originality of the rendering (of) the unconscious and semiconscious lives ... and because of our pleasure in recognizing and understanding not only literary parallels, parodies and pastiches but also verbal resonances from prior chapters."

Be that as it may, it was simply a rumor that first drew Jeanne Roman to "Ulysses" some 50 years ago.

She heard it was a dirty book.

"And if it was a dirty book, I wanted to read it," said Roman, 75, of Jamesville, who has belonged to the local Joyce club for some six years. "I started trying to read it, but I didn't understand half of what I was reading, and I couldn't find anything dirty anywhere."

Roman abandoned the effort but returned to the text a couple of times over the next dozen years. With her third attempt, she fell in love.

"Joyce did change the whole form and shape of writing," Roman said. "For a while, I couldn't forgive him for it. I used to read a short story, and it either had a nice neat ending or sometimes a surprise ending. But it ended. And now you finish a short story and, say, "Huh?' That's Joyce who did that."

Unlike Roman, retired journalist Dick Long of Auburn found he couldn't get past the first two chapters of "Ulysses" alone.

And with good reason. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia says that readers of "Ulysses" need to have a working knowledge of the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, the history of heresy, Irish legend, European history, mythology, astronomy, Hebrew, Latin, Gaelic and Gypsy slang.

Long didn't. So he founded the Joyce club in 1994 with Thomas Lavoie, a Joyce scholar and former assistant director of Syracuse University Press.

"Reading "Ulysses' under Tom's tutelage and in the company of others was the answer to my problem," Long said. "I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and finally realized the power of the book: "Ulysses' comes alive when read aloud in the company of others. Many of the chapters lend themselves to acting out, like one-act plays."

Club members gather in each other's homes every two weeks to read the mammoth book. They average about 12 pages a meeting and recently completed their third full reading, which took two years.

The complexity of Joyce's material lends itself to group readings, according to club member Annunziata, who teaches English at Le Moyne College.

"He is so rich in puns and allusions, OK? And he demands that you make connections between statements made maybe 100 pages apart," Annunziata, 71, of Baldwinsville, said. "And when you're working in a group, someone jumps up and sees the pun or sees the connection, and then the enthusiasm becomes contagious."

Paul Dunn, current club president, was surprised to discover the humor in "Ulysses" when he joined the club 4 1/2 years ago.

"It's really a funny book," said Dunn, who lives in Syracuse and works at Fehlman Brothers Garage. "There's just a huge amount of humor in it, all over the place. Secondly, the erudition of Joyce himself. It's an amazing amount of material he pulls from and puts in that book."

When Carol Radin, this year's producer of Bloomsday, tells friends she belongs to the club, they give her a blank look.

"Usually the reaction is "Oh,"' said Radin, who works as an academic counselor at SU. "It's almost as if you told someone you were a nuclear physicist."

So she's only too eager to talk about the club when actually asked.

"I'm finally finishing the book, and I'm in my 50s," Radin said. "It takes a lot of support to finish the book."

Besides support, club meetings also offer an old-fashioned kind of recreation, she said.

"It's an opportunity to get together with people and do something that's non-electronic, non-multimedia," she said. "It's like a throwback to another century, when people just got together and talked."

From banned to best: Odd bits about "Ulysses'

1918: "Ulysses" published in installments by a small Greenwich Village magazine, the Little Review. The New York Anti-Vice Society took note of its frank sexual content, and the publishers were tried under obscenity provisions in the U.S. Postal Code. Found guilty and fined, the publisher ceased publication. "Ulysses" then was printed by an American publisher in Paris in 1922, but remained banned in the United States until 1933.

Such famous writers as Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound admitted they were confused by their first reading of the book.

Joyce estimated he spent nearly 20,000 hours writing "Ulysses."

The day "Ulysses" takes place, June 16, 1904, was a significant date in Joyce's own life: It was the day he first went out with his future wife, Nora Barnacle.

The Modern Library in 1998 voted "Ulysses" the best English-language novel of the 20th century.

The National Library of Ireland last week paid $11.7 million for a large collection of previously unknown James Joyce manuscripts that one expert called "the most important collection of early drafts for "Ulysses' in the world."